Husband of Mary Elizabeth Horton Cooley.

Thomas Cooley was born in Attica, New York, the son of Thomas and Rachel Hubbard Cooley.

He spent three years at Attica Academy. In 1842 he began to study law in an office at Palymra, New York, and the next year removed to Michigan. He read law at Adrian three years. He was admitted to the Bar in 1846.

He engaged in the real estate business in Toledo, and was also active in local politics. In 1857 he was selected by the Legislature to compile the statutes of Michigan, and in 1858 was appointed Reporter of the State Supreme Court.

On the establishment of the Department of Law at the State University in 1859 he became one of the original faculty. He was assigned to the Jay Professorship of Law. He removed to Ann Arbor in 1859.

In 1885 he was appointed Professor American History and Constitutional Law and continued in that capacity until his death. The office of Reporter to the Supreme Court, which he held from 1858 to 1865, was the stepping-stone to a seat on the State Supreme Bench. He was elected a judge of that court in November, 1864. He was twice re-elected, serving in all twenty-one years.

After his resignation from the Supreme Bench in 1885 he did distinguished legal work in connection with the railroads of the country. In 1886 he was appointed receiver of that part of the Wabash Railroad System which lies east of the Mississippi River, and the next year President Cleveland appointed him chairman of the newly authorized Interstate Commerce Commission. Owing to failing health he resigned from the Commission in 1891. In 1893 he was president of the American Bar Association. He ceased to lecture in the University and abandoned all law practice in 1894.

He died at Ann Arbor.



(Bio by George Seitz)

Father of Fannie (Mrs Alexis C Angell), Eugene F, Edgar A., Charles H, Thomas B, and Mary.


∼Michigan Supreme Court Justice from 1864 - 1885
Editor of Adrian Watchtower newspaper
Jay Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law Department
Author-Cooley's Constitutional Limitations
Appointed a commissioner of Interstate Commerce Commission 1887-1891